Paediatric non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: impact on patients and mothers' quality of life

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the causes of fatty liver in adults and is currently the primary form of chronic liver disease in children and adolescents. However, the psychological outcome (i.e. the behavioural problems that can in turn be related to psychiatric conditions, like anxiety and mood disorders, or lower quality of life) in children and adolescents suffering of NAFLD has not been extensively explored in the literature. Objectives: The present study aims at evaluating the emotional and behavioural profile in children suffering from NAFLD and the quality of life in their mothers. Patients and Methods: A total of 57 children (18 females/39 males) with NAFLD were compared to 39 age-matched control children (25 females/14 males). All participants were submitted to the following psychological tools to assess behavior, mood, and anxiety: the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC), the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), and the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI). Moreover, the mothers of 40 NAFLD and 39 control children completed the World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire. Results: NAFLD children scored significantly higher as compared to control children in MASC (P = 0.001) and CDI total (P < 0.001) scales. The CBCL also revealed significantly higher scores for NAFLD children in total problems (P = 0.046), internalizing symptoms (P = 0.000) and somatic complaints (P < 0.001). The WHOQOL-BREF revealed significantly lower scores for the mothers of NAFLD children in the overall perception of the quality of life (P < 0.001), and in the "relationships" domain (P = 0.023). Conclusions: Increased emotional and behavioural problems were detected in children with NAFLD as compared to healthy control children, together with an overall decrease in their mothers' quality of life. These results support the idea that these patients may benefit from a psychological intervention, ideally involving both children and parents, whose quality of life is likely negatively affected by this disease

Enseigner le français en contexte universitaire à des étudiants non francophones en mobilité : quelle place pour les littératures francophones ?

The role of literature in language teaching has been re-assessed ; it has been documented in numerous work, many of them paying a special attention to francophone literature, which seems to be able to function as a bridge between languages and cultures. This paper will analyze individual interviews conducted with teachers  working in French-language university centers. How do they define this corpus (including, or not, french «hexagonal» literature ?)  Which place and functions do they assign to theses litteratures in their teaching practices 

Taurine: an energy "drink" for deep sea microbes

Presentación oralThe wide use of –omics approaches has led to the discovery of novel metabolic pathways in uncultivated marine bacteria. For example, metagenomic and –proteomic studies revealed that taurine might be an important substrate for heterotrophic marine bacteria. Taurine, an organic acid, is widely produced by marine metazoans and some phytoplankton albeit its concentration and turnover in the ocean has not been determined yet. In this study, we determined the role of taurine as carbon and energy source throughout the water column of the open North Atlantic from the epipelagic to the bathypelagic realm. Bulk uptake and respiration of taurine were measured and microautoradiography was combined with catalyzed reporter deposition fluorescence in situ hybridization to evaluate taurine uptake by specific phylogenetic groups. A shift between the dominant use of taurine as a carbon source from the epi- and mesopelagic (about 40% of taurine respired) to the bathypelagic (76% respired) realm was observed. Taken together, our results indicate that taurine is effectively used by marine prokaryotes, especially in the mesopelagic environment where zooplankton, a potential source for taurine, reside during the day

How SARS-CoV-2 Infection Impacts the Management of Patients with Vulvar Cancer: Experience in a Third-Level Hospital of Southern Italy

: Background: Since February 2020, the spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Italy has induced the government to call for lockdown of any activity apart from primary needs, and changing the lives of each of us. All that has dramatically impacted the management of patients affected by cancer. Patients with vulvar cancer (VC) represent a particularly frail population because they are elderly and affected by multiple comorbidities. The aim of this study is to evaluate the clinical impact of the SARS-CoV-2 infection on VC patients in terms of delay or impossibility of carrying out the scheduled treatment. Methods: The medical records of patients affected by vulvar tumors, referred to "DAI Materno-Infantile" of AOU Federico II of Naples between February 2020 and January 2022 were retrospectively analyzed. The presence of a positive reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in nasopharyngeal swab defined the positivity to SARS-CoV-2. Results: Twenty-four patients with VC were analyzed and scheduled for treatment. The median age was 70.7 years (range: 59-80). Seven (29.2%) patients were diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection: In three (42.8%) patients, the treatment was delayed with no apparent consequences, in four (57.2%), the treatment was delayed or changed due to cancer progression and, of these four, one died due to respiratory complications of COVID-19, and one died due to oncologic disease progression. Conclusion: COVID-19 caused, in most cases, significant delays in oncologic treatments and high mortality in our series of patients affected by VC

An outlook on self-assessment of homework assignments in higher mathematics education

Abstract Background We discuss first experiences with a new variant of self-assessment in higher mathematics education. In our setting, the students of the course have to mark a part of their homework assignments themselves and they receive the corresponding credit without that any later changes are carried out by the teacher. In this way, we seek to correct the imbalance between student-centered learning arrangements and assessment concepts that keep the privilege to grade (or mark) completely with the teacher. Results We present results in the form of student feedback from a course on functional analysis for third- and fourth-year students. Moreover, we analyze marking results from two courses on real analysis. Here, we compare tasks marked by the teacher and tasks marked by the students. Conclusions Our experiments indicate that students can benefit from self-assessment tasks. The success depends, however, on many different factors. Promising for self-assessment seem to be small learning groups and tasks in which a priori weaker students can catch up with stronger students by increasing their practising time

Représentations du plurilinguisme chez de futurs enseignants de langue en formation initiale

What kind of representations of plurilingualism do students who are training to become teachers have? Do they take into account learners’ multilingual repertoires (L1 and others)? What role do these questions play in the building of their professional identity? These questions are addressed in this article by examining the results of a questionnaire study of 87 students training to become teachers. This research is part of a larger regional project which examines obstacles and opportunities in developing plurilingualism in an educational context

The <i>Castalia</i> mission to Main Belt Comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro

We describe Castalia, a proposed mission to rendezvous with a Main Belt Comet (MBC), 133P/Elst-Pizarro. MBCs are a recently discovered population of apparently icy bodies within the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which may represent the remnants of the population which supplied the early Earth with water. Castalia will perform the first exploration of this population by characterising 133P in detail, solving the puzzle of the MBC’s activity, and making the first in situ measurements of water in the asteroid belt. In many ways a successor to ESA’s highly successful Rosetta mission, Castalia will allow direct comparison between very different classes of comet, including measuring critical isotope ratios, plasma and dust properties. It will also feature the first radar system to visit a minor body, mapping the ice in the interior. Castalia was proposed, in slightly different versions, to the ESA M4 and M5 calls within the Cosmic Vision programme. We describe the science motivation for the mission, the measurements required to achieve the scientific goals, and the proposed instrument payload and spacecraft to achieve these